The Reading Process –

from understanding to teaching

The reading process –
a transactional view

Reader Transaction Text

Immediate situational contexts

Broader sociolinguistic contexts

Source: Weaver C, 1988

Reading Behaviours of a
Proficient Reader
 Develops anticipation; activates prior
knowledge

 Decodes and samples with sufficient

speed
 Predicts as he reads
 Reads on, re-reads, confirms or
corrects
Reading problems of our
students as novice readers
 Little anticipation
 Read word by word
 Got stuck with a difficult word and give up
reading
 Skip difficult words and read on despite
loss of meaning
 Seldom re-read and self-correct
The Cueing Systems of the
English Language

1. Graphophonic cues
2. Semantic cues
3. Syntactic cues
Graphophonic Cues (Visual)

 Letter-sound correspondences

Questions to ask:

 Do I know the beginning / ending sounds?

 Are there pronounceable parts?
 Do I know any words of similar spelling?
Semantic Cues (Meaning)

 context of the sentence / passage

 background knowledge / prior experience

Questions to ask:

 What word would fit the meaning here?

 Does this word make sense?
Syntactic Cues (Structural)

 grammatical patterns

Questions to ask:
 What word would fit into the structural
pattern here?

 Does it sound like English?

Miscues – What caused them?

I can sleep those hiccups. (stop)

Elephant gives it a toy. (try)

I can’t do out and I have nothing to do. (go)

Can I read you a story, mum? // No, I’m tiger. (tired)

Grandma makes a hot in the castle. (hole)

Miscues – What caused them?

All animals are sleep. (sleeping)

As the animals go back to sleep. (All)

Do you want to do you homework? (your)

Quality miscues – substitutions
that preserve meaning

It’s a hot sunny afternoon. (summer)

Poor animal has the hiccups. (elephant)

I can stop her hiccups. (those)

“Why not clean your room?” Mum asks. (tidy)

Quality miscues – self-corrections

“Boo!” her shouts. (he)

We like sharing or candy. (our)

He was the hiccups. (has)

Implications for teachers
 Explicit and planned instruction for
reading skills

 Emphasis on interactiveness of reading

process – anticipation, prediction,
personal responses, critical and
reflective thinking, etc.

 Wide reading of easy and interesting

materials
A balanced reading
program –5 essential
components
1. Phonological awareness
2. Phonics
3. Sight words & vocabulary development
4. Reading fluency
5. Comprehension strategies
A balanced reading programme

- Phonological awareness &

phonics skills
Phonological awareness &
phonics skills

Phonological awareness ---

 awareness of constituent sounds of written words in learning
to read and spell
 knowledge of phonemes, onsets and rimes and syllables
 influences the development of word decoding & reading

Phonics skills instruction ---

 a way of teaching reading that stresses learning how letters
correspond to sounds and how to use this knowledge in
reading and spelling through various skills like decoding and
blending
Phonics skills

Phonics skills are means to the end of

successful reading ---- ‘a catalyst which
triggers the process of learning to read’

---- Maclean (1998)

Teaching phonics in our context

Questions to ask:
Why do we teach phonics to our very young
learners?
What should we teach? (knowledge of sounds or
skills)
How can we teach phonics effectively?
Who is the best person to teach phonics in
school? ………..
Teaching phonics in our context

 Characteristics of our learners

 inadequate language environment, limited prior
knowledge and repertoire of words

Q: What can we base on? Where should we start?

 Different approaches e.g. part-to-whole, whole-to-part,
phoneme-by-phoneme, onsets & rimes

Q: What are the rationale & purposes? How effective are

they? How should the teachers and learners make their
choice?
Teaching phonics in our context
 Different phonological characteristics between Chinese
and English
Q: How should we focus on potentially problematic sounds
and letter combinations?

 Learner needs and differences e.g. background, learning

styles, attitude, relationship between phonics and other
areas of learning
Q: How should we cater for our learners’ needs and
differences?

 How can we help our learners learn phonics effectively?

proactive teaching active phonics skills

Implications for teachers

 Phonics should be a meaningful and integrated

part of our curriculum (reading program), with
ample opportunities for learning, application and
solving learning problems.

 Teaching must build on what students already

know and give them space to see patterns and
draw inferences.
Implications for teachers

Q: Is it advisable for teachers to use a separate

package to help students learn phonics and
tackle their learning problems?

Q: Should phonics be treated in isolation and

handled by one teacher alone e.g. NET?
What are the problems?

1. Unfamiliar vocabulary --- difficult to draw analogy

2. Unrelated to their studies --- extra burden & can’t

help to solve learning problems

3. No application --- no explicit teaching of skills and

how to apply them in new texts

4. No feedback or assessment
Planning: phonics & our
curriculum

Integration

Variation

Application
Curriculum Restructuring & Integration
Activities / tasks
Games ……..

Other resources: Big Books

Supplementary / Textbook Small readers
(framework/ context/
Poems / Plays
Grammar /
Phonics language focus) Reading / Listening
worksheets ….. materials….

output
guided writing / free writing / reading aloud /
reading interest / project…….
authentic and meaningful use of language
 Connecting with the Natural World
Activities : songs & rhymes,
sharing of students’ work
Big Books:
1.What’s the time ?
Other resources: Textbook 2.Every Monday
• teacher’s diary 3.All through the week
Unit 5: Telling the time, describing with cat and dog
• worksheets habitual actions 4.What’s the weather
like today?
• sounds (ay, og, Unit 6: Days of the week
5. Weather machine
ice) Unit 7,8: Weather and seasons Small readers:
1. The busy giant
output 2. Winnie and the cat

free writing — ‘My diary’: describing particular activities &

expressing feelings in short paragraphs

authentic and meaningful use of language

Planning: phonics & our
curriculum

 Embed phonics with all other areas of learning &

make full use of all existing resources ---textbooks,
big books, readers, sound books ….

 Build on what students already know & encourage

active learning --- analogy

 Teach different essential skills explicitly

 Give feedback and reflect on student learning ---

observation, formative and summative assessment
A balanced reading programme

-- Sight words
What are sight words?

Words that are recognized

as wholes, on sight
one, two, you,
have, father, the, the, and, I, book,
they…. play, happy, big….

Words that cannot be High-frequency words

phonically produced

witches, spell,
Snow White, magic, frogs,
Billy Goat Gruff, castle
Biff, Chip

Words of special interest

The role of sight words in
reading

Quick word recognition  reasonable

reading speed  less interference with
comprehension  better meaning construction

 Good sight words  more attention on new

words  vocabulary expansion
To learn a sight word, the
students must:

 see the word in context many times

 hear the word and say it aloud
 identify the word, in context and in
isolation
Learning sight words through
games and activities

• Reading sight word cards with partner

• Snap cards and Pelmanism
• Snakes and Ladders
• Dominoes
Vocabulary Development
through intensive and extensive reading

Useful ways to ‘anchor’ words:

 word walls / semantic mapping

 class dictionary / personal vocabulary

books
 word building /word analysis (tied in with
phonics)
 using words in writing
A balanced reading programme

-- Reading Fluency
 Fluent oral
reading (with Access to
expression) models of
expressive
reading

(SILENT)
READING
FLUENCY

Comprehension Word recognition Chunking words

(fast & accurate) (syntactic cues)

(Source: Oakley, G. 2001)

Repeated Reading
 reading of short, easy & interesting texts over
and over again

 well-researched method to improve fluency

(Samuels 1979, 2002)

 often results in improved comprehension

(Hasbrouch, Ihnot, & Rogers 1999)

 most students enjoy it; a favoured activity

among low-progress readers
(Lipson & Wixson 1997)
A balanced reading programme

-- comprehension strategies
“…. Reading comprehension
has come to be viewed as the
‘essence of reading’”
---(National Reading Panel, 2000, p.4-1)
Different approaches

 linear approach (comprehension takes place

through progressive analysis of small units,
beginning with the word and ending in the
sentence) v.s.
 psycholinguistic approach (emphasizing the
paragraph as basic text unit and focus on
mental process leading to global
comprehension)
Transactional view of reading:

 Meaning is constructed through multiple & evolving complex

transactions between the reader, text and context
 Reading is a ‘psycholinguistic guessing game’
--- from hypotheses to confirmation/rejection
--- a ‘cyclical process of sampling, predicting, confirming
& correcting’
--- K.S. Goodman
 Comprehension is not just the by-product of accurate word
recognition… comprehension is a complex process which
requires active and intentional cognitive effort on the part of
the reader.
Transactional view of reading:

Both the outcomes of comprehension and the

process itself are interactive and dynamic.

Q: How can students work actively to integrate

textual information with preexisting knowledge
structure / schemata?
Current practice

 ‘Teachers taught comprehension less than one

percent of the time, and that this instruction was
more than a matter of ‘mentioning’ than actual
explanation or demonstration’ ------ Dolores Durkin
(1978-79)

 Comprehension instruction remains inadequate in

our classrooms. ---- Michael Pressley (1998)
Current practice

 Reading ---- ‘the most thoroughly studied and least

understood process in education today’

 Reading has been sorely neglected in foreign

language classrooms, and most recent
methodological innovations have little to say about
the development of reading comprehension.

 Comprehension of text is not a visible act, nor is it

audible.
Current practice
 A typical comprehension lesson:
1. Start with word-by-word decoding and translation (using
controlled vocabulary)
2. Followed by comprehension questions (who, what, when,
where etc) most of which involve direct-lifting answers
(literal comprehension)
3. End with checking answers with little/no explanation

Repeated practice = teaching=good performance

in comprehension??
Current practice
Problems:
 no training of higher-order comprehension skills:
 interpretive (read between the lines)
 critical (read for evaluation)
 creative (read beyond the lines)
 no development of students’ skills in syntactical,
semantic, lexical, stylistic analysis and making
excursion to their knowledge of the world to confirm
meaning
 loss of contextual focus, overview, and immediate
frustration as soon as the reader encounters an
unknown word
What do our students think?
 ‘I used to believe that I have to know all the words in the
English readings in order to understand the readings.
Therefore, I read in English with the dictionary beside me all
the time. I read English readings only for homework before I
came to this reading class. I never read any English readings
because I wanted to read them….. I like to read in my first
language, but I just could not read in English with the same
feeling as I read in Chinese. The belief that I have to know
all the words in order to understand the reading made
me lose interest…..’ ---- Li, an ESL student

 ‘Younger and poorer readers often rely on a single criterion

for textual understanding: Understanding of individual
words’ ---- Garner & Alexander (1989)
What affect comprehension?
 students’ experiential background
 students’ sensory & perceptual abilities

 students’ thinking abilities

 students’ affective aspects (self-concepts,

attitudes & interest)
 word recognition strategies

 comprehension strategies

* greatest obstacles to comprehension are students’

dispositions towards reading---- Villaume & Edna
Transactional strategies
instruction
Help students to
 activate their prior knowledge
 make predictions
 generate questions, answer questions and draw
inferences
 monitor their comprehension & seek clarification
when confused
 create pictorial mental imagery & mnemonic imagery
 create summaries of what they have read
 evaluate what they have read
Transactional strategies
instruction
Predict:
think about the title, the illustrations, and what you have read so far;
Tell what you think will happen next or what you will learn

Question:
Ask yourself questions as you read

Monitor/clarify:
Ask yourself if what you are reading make sense
If you don’t understand something, reread, read aloud, or use the illustrations

Summarize:
Think about the main ideas or the important part of the story
Tell the important things in your own words

Evaluate:
Ask yourself
Do I like what I have read?
Do I agree or disagree with it?
Am I learning what I wanted to know?
How good a job has the author done?
Explicit teaching
 Direct explanation (describe what the strategy is and
explain why the strategy should be learned and used)
 Modeling (model it and provide examples of the
circumstances under which the strategy should be used)
 Guided practice & scaffolding
 Feedback
 Application

* increase students’ metacognitive awareness and use of

reading strategies
Implications for teachers
Issues to consider:
 comprehension or psycholinguistic guessing
skill can & should be taught
 students’ comprehension is developmental
 reading comprehension should be a dynamic
interactive exchange between teacher &
students
 students can compensate for a lack of English
proficiency by increasing their awareness of
reading strategies
 extensive reading practice is essential in
building both fluency & knowledge (extensive
v.s. intensive reading practice)
Implications for teachers

Things to do:
 draw in / activate students’ prior knowledge

 develop students’ awareness of clue-searching

strategies
 select text based on students’ interests and
knowledge and make comprehension an
integrated part of the curriculum
 use different reading materials (including
readers) and design a variety of tasks for
different purposes
Not so ‘typical’ comprehension
exercises ---
 guessing game & confirmation / correction
 brainstorming & mind-mapping

 semantic webbing & story mapping

 cloze --- with specific purposes focusing on particular skills
e.g. reference skills, using semantic or syntactic clues
 matching e.g. vocabulary skill
 proof-reading questions

 personal response
 reading-writing connection
Conclusion

It is important that a full range of

instructional approaches be considered
within a variety of contexts that address
both developmental and cultural differences
in how children best learn to comprehend.
The Reading Process

 See and perceive the symbols

 Follow the sequence of words

 Associate symbols and sounds

 Associate symbols and meanings
 Follow the grammatical patterns
 Relate ideas to past experience
 Make inferences/evaluate
 Deal with personal interests and attitudes
that affect reading
(Source: Burns, Roe and Ross, 1999)
Transaction

 Putting everything together to construct a

personal meaning for the text

 Communicating thoughts and emotions

between reader and writer
Reading sight word cards with
partners
Snap cards and Pelmanism
Snakes and Ladders
Dominoes
Fluent oral reading (with expression)
Models of expressive reading
(Silent) Reading Fluency